David, your gear list shows you own some incredibly fine glass... surely you can see more in an image than just "sharpness"?

Perhaps you could help me understand your opinion better by precisely explaining what you mean when you say "the lens is not sharp"?

Thank you

Andrew

You were looking at my gear *wishlist*. I have a Nikon 180 AF, 85 1.4D, 85 1.8G, and a Sigma 35 Art. Those also qualify as nice glass, but it's not what you saw in the gear list.

Sharpness isn't everything one might want from a lens, but a sufficiently sharp focal plane is the most fundamental requirement of a lens.

Down-sampling is nothing more than throwing away resolution that the lens failed to deliver.

I love some of the pictures I've seen posted here from the 58, but I don't think its image quality is any better than the old Sigma 50 which costs about 4x less, achieves better sharpness, and provides similarly excellent bokeh.

I see a lot of people making claims related to bokeh quality of the Sigma vs. Otus vs. 58mm, but it's almost impossible to properly judge without a side-by-side comparison. Here we have one, and while there is a visible difference in bokeh, none appear perfect in this example. (On further inspection, I do see differences between the Zeiss and Sigma; I'd say the Sigma looks a bit better but it's a close call.) However the 58mm is noticeably unsharp even in this very low-resolution image!